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A Robotic Ecosystem
The Basic Ecosystem
The basic idea of this ecosystem
was developed by Luc Steels and David McFarland. The implementation and
the further development of the ecosystem was done at the AI-lab
of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. The basic version of this artificial
ecosystem consists of
- the charging-station
- where robots can autonomously
re-load their batteries. The charging-station is equipped with a bright
white light on top as a kind of landmark.
- simple mobile robots
- which are equipped with
basic behaviors for e.g. obstacle avoidance. In addition, they do phototaxis
towards the charging station and towards
- the competitors
- boxes housing lamps connected
to the same global energy source as the charging station. The modulated
light of these lamps can be dimmed by other inhabitants of the ecosystem
by knocking against the boxes. The competitors establish a kind of
working task which is paid in energy.
The mechanical design of the different robots in the ecosystem is very simple
and imprecise, as it is based on on toy-construction-kits like e.g. LEGOTMand
FischertechnikTM.
But on the electronics side, the robots are equipped with elaborated on-board
control-computers.
The software controlling the
autonomous operation of the robots is based on the so-called behavior-oriented
approach. A behavior is a software-module that establishes a close link
between sensor values and motor activations. All behaviors run in parallel
and their effect on the motors is simply added up. There is no global
control or arbitration mechanism.
This leads to so-called emergent
phenomena, which are kind of side-effects from the superposition of different
behaviors and their interactions with the robots environment. For example,
the task for moles to "fight" the competitors is not explicitly programmed
into the robots. Instead, it emerges out of the phototaxis towards the
modulated light and the touch-based obstacle-avoidance. Due to the phototaxis,
the robots are kind of attracted by the competitors. Consequently, they
drive towards them, they bump into them, the touch-based obstacle-avoidance
causes them to retract, they are attracted again, and so on. As a result,
a robot bumps several times into a competitor until the competitor dims
and the attraction is gone. Note, that the number of bumps is not explicitly
programmed and that there is an automatic adaptation to the "strength"
of the competitors.
The Extended Ecosystem
An extended version of the
ecosystem features an additional inhabitant, the so-called "head". It
consists of a camera on a pan-tilt-unit and it has quite some vision capabilities.
As it is not mobile, the head cannot access the charging-station and it
is forced to cooperate.
Some Research Topics in the
Ecosystem
Though the basic idea of
this artificial ecosystem is rather simple, it provides many possibilities
for research on various subjects related to autonomous systems, including
basic economic concepts, learning, heterogeneous agents, and many more.
The ecosystem can for example be modelled by an N-player prisoners'
dilemma and it can hence serve for the study of the evolution, respectively
learning of cooperation. Below a few references related to my contributions
in this ecosystem research. Note that the online papers are draft versions
of the actual publications for which references are given.
Related Publications
Andreas
Birk
The Evolution of Cooperation in Groups with up to 25 Agents
Artificial Intelligence and Applications, AIA,
ACTA Press, 2004
Andreas Birk
Learning to Cooperate via a Selectionist Algorithm
Artificial Intelligence and Applications, AIA,
ACTA Press, 2004
Andreas
Birk and Julie Wiernik
An
N-Players Prisoner’s Dilemma in a Robotic Ecosystem
(bibtex)
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Volume 39, pp. 223-233
Elsevier Science, 2002
Andreas Birk, Holger Kenn, and Luc Steels
Programming
with Behavior Processes (bibtex)
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Volume 39, pp. 115-127
Elsevier Science, 2002
Tony
Belpaeme and Andreas Birk
Hungry
Robots (bibtex)
ACM Crossroads, Winter 8.2,
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2001
Andreas Birk
Learning to Trust
(bibtex)
R. Falcone, M. Singh, and Y. Tan (Eds.),
Trust in Cyber-society: Integrating Human and Machine Perspective,
LNAI 2246 Springer, 2001
Andreas Birk
Boosting
Cooperation by Evolving Trust (bibtex)
Applied Artificial Intelligence Journal,
Volume 14, Number 8, pp 769 - 784
Taylor and Francis, 2000
Andreas Birk
Boosting
Cooperation by Evolving Trust (bibtex)
Applied Artificial Intelligence Journal,
Volume 14, Number 8, pp 769 - 784
Taylor and Francis, 2000
Andreas Birk, Holger Kenn and Thomas Walle
On-board
Control in the RoboCup Small Robots League (bibtex)
Advanced Robotics Journal,
Volume 14, Number 1, pp 27 - 36
VSP International Science Publishers, 2000
M. Asada, A. Birk, E. Pagello, M. Fujita, I. Noda, S. Tadokoro, D. Duhaut,
P. Stone, M. Veloso, T. Balch, H. Kitano, and B. Thomas
Progress in Robot World Cup Soccer (RoboCup) Research Issues
in 2000
Experimental Robotics VII, Lecture Notes in Control and Information
Sciences
Springer, 2000
Andreas Birk, Wolfgang Paul
Schemas
and Genetic Programming (bibtex)
Ritter, Cruse, Dean (Eds.),
Prerational Intelligence: Adaptive Behavior and Intelligent Systems
without Symbols and Logic,
Volume II, Studies in Cognitive Systems 36,
Kluwer, 2000
Minoru Asada, Raffaello D'Andrea, Andreas Birk, Hiroaki Kitano, and
Manuela Veloso
Robotics in Edutainment
Proc. of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation,
ICRA’00
IEEE Press, 2000
Andreas Birk and Holger Kenn
Programming with Behavior Processes
In Proc. of the International Symposium on Intelligent Robotic
Systems,
SIRS, 2000
Andreas Birk and Julie Wiernik
A N-Player Prisoner's Dilemma in a Robotic Ecosystem
In Proc. of the International Symposium on Intelligent Robotic
Systems,
SIRS, 2000
M. Asada, A. Birk, E. Pagello, M. Fujita, I. Noda, S. Tadokoro, D. Duhaut,
P. Stone, M. Veloso, T. Balch, H. Kitano and B. Thomas
Progress in RoboCup Soccer Research in 2000
In Proc. of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics,
ISER, 2000
Andreas Birk, Holger Kenn and Luc Steels
Efficient Behavioral Processes
From Animals to Animats 6, Proceedings Supplement Book,
SAB, 2000
Andreas Birk and Julie Wiernik
Partner-based Strategies for a Real-World Instance of the N-Players
Prisoner’s Dilemma with Continuous Degrees of Cooperation
From Animals to Animats 6, Proceedings Supplement Book,
SAB, 2000
Andreas Birk, Thomas Walle, Tony Belpaeme, Holger Kenn
The VUB AI-Lab RoboCup'99 small league team
Veloso, Pagello, and Kitano (Eds.);
RoboCup ’99: Robot soccer World Cup III, LNAI
Springer, 1999
Andreas Birk, Holger Kenn
Heterogeneity and On-Board
Control in the Small Robots League (bibtex)
Veloso, Pagello, and Kitano (Eds.)
RoboCup ’99: Robot soccer World Cup III, LNAI
Springer, 1999
Andreas Birk
Robot-Learning and Self-Sufficiency: What the Energy-Level Can
Tell us About a Robot’s Performance
Birk and Demiris (Eds.),
Learning Robots, LNAI 1545
Springer, 1998
Andreas Birk, Tony Belpaeme
A Multi-Agent-System based on Heterogeneous Robots
Drogoul, Tambe, and Fukuda (Eds.),
Collective Robotics, LNAI 1456
Springer, 1998
Andreas Birk
Behavior-based Robotics, its Scope and its Prospects
Proc. of The 24th Annual conference of the IEEE Industrial
Electronics Society
IEEE Press, 1998
Andreas Birk, Tony Belpaeme
An Overview of the Extended VUB Ecosystem, a MAS of Heterogeneous
Robots
Proc. of the International Conference on Multi Agent Systems
IEEE Press, 1998
Andreas Birk
Learning of an Anticipatory World-Model and the Quest for General
versus Reinforced Knowledge
Proc. of The First Int. Conf. on Anticipatory Systems, American
Inst. of Physics Publications
AIP Press, 1998
Andreas Birk, Julie Wiernik
Economic Aspects of a Real-World Ecosystem Featuring Several
Robot Species
Proc. of The 2nd Workshop on Economics with Heterogeneous Interacting
Agents
Edward Elgar Pub., 1998
Tony Belpaeme, Andreas Birk
On the Watch
Proc. of The 30th International Symposium on Automotive Technology
and Automation
ISATA Press, 1997
Andreas Birk
Autonomous Recharging of Mobile Robots
Proc. of The 30th International Symposium on Automotive Technology
and Automation
ISATA Press, 1997
Andreas Birk
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